It's Hard, Being a Chinese DJ
Source: Wired
Aspiring DJ Xiao Lin was prepared to beg, borrow or steal the 400 yuan (U.S.$48) she needed to secure a pass for master mixer Paul Oakenfold's Great Wall of China spectacular in April this year.
When it was rumored that the man who has worked his sonic magic for everyone from Madonna and U2 to New Order and The Happy Mondays was to play an outdoor set at the foot of China's best-known visitor attraction, the 19-year-old's first response was to get online.
Checking in with the growing community of online clubber friends she has built up over the past 18 months, the Beijing graphic design student then slipped into her favorites cache to select the English DJ's official site for confirmation of the news.
It wasn't long before "Stanley's Theme," a pulsing cut from the soundtrack of hacker movie Swordfish was blasting out of her computer speakers from the site's in-built mini jukebox. Her appetite whetted, she moved across to yesdj.com, arguably the most popular of a growing number of Chinese sites dedicated to swapping and downloading music.
"This is where I get a lot of my stuff," she said with a mischievous smile, referring to the vast stockpile of music she has downloaded and burned onto dirt cheap CD-ROMs for use in her own sets.
Welcome to the resourceful world of the Chinese DJ.
Pioneering "computer DJ" Christiaan Virant, a bip-hop records recording artist also based in Beijing, has witnessed firsthand the growing popularity of downloading DJs.
They bypass hurdles unthinkable in the West to grab cutting-edge music "on the same day as it's released anywhere else in the world." These are then typically burned on a CDR or played as MP3s in live sets. It's as simple as that.
